Association of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms with acne vulgaris in a female clinical sample

Objective: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has recently been reported to be related to elevated rates of acne vulgaris in two different epidemiological studies. However, the association between ADHD and acne vulgaris has not been investigated in a clinical setting. ADHD is a childhood-onset neurodevelopmental disorder; therefore, it is not expected to develop secondarily to the psychosocial burden of having acne vulgaris. It has been considered that androgen exposure in early life may be related to the development of both ADHD and acne vulgaris. Therefore, elucidating the putative association between ADHD and acne vulgaris may help in identifying common etiological factors between these conditions, such as elevated androgen exposure in early life. The aim of this study was to assess the symptoms of childhood and current ADHD symptoms in a clinical sample of women with acne vulgaris.

Methods: The study sample consisted of 91 women with acne vulgaris referred to the Dermatology Clinic of Selcuk University Faculty of Medicine and 53 control subjects. Childhood and current ADHD symptoms of the participants were assessed using the Wender Utah Rating Scale (WURS) and the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS), respectively. Acne severity was measured by the International Consensus Conference on Acne Classification System, which classifies three grades (mild, moderate, and severe acne). While the normal distribution of variables was acceptable, Student’s t-test and, in other cases, Mann–Whitney U-test were used to analyze the differences between patient and control groups. Pearson or Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated to examine the relationship between the ADHD scores and severity of acne.

Results: The mean age did not differ significantly between the patient (22.2±4.3 years) and control (22.4±4.4 years) groups. The education level was also similar in the patients with acne vulgaris (13.3±3.0 years) and controls (13.7±2.9 years) (range: 5–17 years). There were no significant differences between patients and controls on any of the ADHD scales. Furthermore, except for childhood irritability, ADHD symptoms did not show a relationship with acne severity.

Conclusion: Contrary to the results of past epidemiological studies, this study did not show a relationship between ADHD and acne vulgaris in the clinical sample. As a conclusion, our study did not support the view that ADHD is related to acne vulgaris.